Storytime

I recently ran a writing memoir workshop and once again I was amazed at so many people who thought 'who would be interested in my life.' Everyone has a story to tell. Every one. Yes, not all of them are going to be award winning best sellers, but even if you are leaving your story for your children or grand-children or great-grand-children, then it's worth it. In this workshop were people who grew up in Collingwood in the forties...folks who had been born in India and came to the cultural difference of Australia in the sixties....people who had left the inner city at 18 to work on a cattle station in central Queensland. There were reminisces of the ice man deliveries, of the local bookie and his 'cocky' or lookout (policeman's son), of being evicted and coming home from school to find all the furniture out in the street. Some of these stories were powerful, full of pain and even anger after a lot of years. But our pasts are what has created us. ...

Last week I ventured to another library and ran a memoir writing workshop for Seniors Week. It was a lot of fun (and boy was I nervous!) and I'm glad to say not only was there a good turn out but I received some very good comments. In fact one lovely bunch of women would love me to come back each week and help them step by step through their writing. I did make them write and the majority were more than eager to share their work. It was so interesting to discover that while most people know exactly  what they 'want' to write about, when it is said out loud it does sometime lose it's glamour. It becomes a bit humdrum. What we discovered during these two hours was the glory of the aside. People would say 'I''m writing a story about this time when this happened and this happened and I remember vividly this happening". All nice, all great social commentary...but then they would say something like 'and that's when she got the gun out and trie...